French architectural historian/restorer; major theorist of the GothicGLOSSARYGothic, which may well have originated with Alberti as a derogatory term and which certainly corresponds to Vasari's 'maniera tedesca' ('German style'), is properly the descriptive term for an artistic style which achieved its first full flowering in the Ile de France and the surrounding areas in the period between c. 1200 and c. 1270, and which then spread throughout northern Europe. It is characterized by the hitherto unprecedented integration of the arts of sculpture, painting, stained glass and architecture which is epitomized in the great cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens, and Reims or in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In all the arts the predominantly planar forms of the Romanesque are replaced by an emphasis on line. There is a transcendental quality, whether in the soaring forms of the pointed arches or in the new stress on the humanity of Christ, which similarly distinguishes it from the preceding Romanesque style. In thinking of Nicola (d. c. 1284) or Giovanni Pisano (d. after 1314) there is same danger of forgetting what had happened in French sculpture half a century or more earlier, and likewise it is hard to remember that the spectacular achievements of early Renaissance art are a singularly localized eddy in the continuing stream of late gothic European art. By northern European standards few Italian works of art can be called gothic without qualification, and the story of 13th and 14th century Italian architecture is as much one of resistance to the new style as of its reception, whether directly from France or through German or central European intermediaries. In sculpture and in painting, the Italian reluctance to distort the human figure, conditioned by a never wholly submerged awareness of the omnipresent antique heritage, gives a special quality to the work of even those artists such as Giovanni Pisano or Simone Martini who most closely approached a pure gothic style. Nevertheless, the vitalizing role of Northern gothic art throughout the early Renaissance and the period leading up to it should never be underestimated. The artistic, like the cultural and commercial, interaction was continuous and much of the Italian achievement is incomprehensible if seen in isolation. It is not merely at the level of direct exchanges between one artist and another, or the influence of one building; painting, manuscript or piece of sculpture upon another, that the effects are to be felt. The streaming quality of line which is so characteristic of Brunelleschi's early Renaissance architecture surely reflects a sensitivity to the gothic contribution which is entirely independent of, and lies much deeper than, the superficial particularities of form. The counterflow of influence and inspiration from South to North must likewise not be underrated. In particular, the contribution of Italian painters from Duccio and Simone Martini onwards is central to the evolution of the so-called International Gothic style developing in Burgundy, Bohemia and north Italy in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. in 19th-century France; responsible for the "over-restoration" of many Gothic churches in France.
He attended Fontenay, a school known for its anti-clerical republicanism. He participated in the 1830 revolution. Intent on an architectural career and politically liberal, Viollet-le-Duc decided against study at the conservative École des Beaux-Arts in favour of direct experience in the architect's office of Jean-Jacques-Marie Huvé (1783-1852), and Achille-François-René Leclère (1785-1853). Between 1831 and 1836 he visited the regions of Provence, Normandy, the châteaux of the Loire, as well as the Pyrenees and Languedoc. He married his wife, Elisabeth, in 1834 and secured a professorship of Composition and Ornament at a small independent school, the École de Dessin in Paris.
In 1836 he traveled to Italy where he toured Rome, Sicily, Naples and Venice. He returned to Paris in 1837 and studying at the École. Viollet-le-Duc was appointed auditor to the Conseil des Bâtiments Civils in 1838, under his former teacher, Leclère. The Council controlled all buildings belonging to the State, both their construction and renovation. In 1840 Mérimée, as Inspecteur Général des Monuments Historiques, the commission responsible for assigning restoration projects, nominated Viollet-le-Duc for the restoration of the church of the Madeleine, Vézelay. Viollet-le-Duc replaced the later 13th-century pointed vaults with 12th-century semicircular groin vaults in order to give a sense of unity to the naveGLOSSARYthe main interior space of a church building. It may have parallel aisles on each side, often separated from it by pillars, and is intersected by the transept, which cuts across it at the point where the choir begins., but changing the character of the building.
He continued to work on other restorations of churches, many of which had been damaged in the French Revolution and needed sculptural replacement to return them to their didactic ambiance. In Sainte-Chapelle and in 1844 Notre-Dame de Paris, a commission with his colleague, Jean-Baptiste Lassus, Viollet-le-Duc substituted new sculpture for the old, often moving the old to museums. Notre-Dame marked the first of Viollet-le-Duc extremist interventions in churches, altering building to fit his romantic vision the middle ages. Notre-Dame's famous gargoyles (grotesques), for example, are wholly his inventions. Even in his careful reconstructions, such as recutting sculptural molding (Rheims), 19th-century qualities of these works are apparent. The "restoration" of these buildings solidified Viollet-le-Duc's stature. He began to publish his theories of the Gothic in Annales archéologiques in 1845. In 1846 he worked on Saint-Denis abbey, AvignonGLOSSARYThe decision to move the Papacy here was made in August 1308 by Pope Clement V, who had been residing in France since 1305. The actual move was made in 1309. Six pontificates later, in 1377, the Papacy was brought back to Rome by Gregory XI. All the popes elected at Avignon were French, as were 113 of the 134 cardinals appointed during this time. Yet though the period has been called one of 'captivity' to France, the Avignonese residence was not one of uninterrupted truckling to French kings. The city was not on French territory: it belonged to the Angevin princes of Naples. 'Captivity', like Petrarch's 'unholy Babylon', which he likened to the harlot of the Apocalypse 'full of abominations and the filth of her fornication', was mainly a term of abuse directed at a Papacy that had acquired security enough to revive its legal and financial pretensions and to build lavishly and live well. Between 1100 and 1309 the popes had only spent 82 years in Rome. Avignon gave them a long breathing space to assemble the machinery and the values which characterized the Renaissance Papacy after its final resettlement in Rome. between 1860-68, the cathedrals of Amiens (1849-1875), and Rheims (1861-1873) the churches at Poissy (1852-1865) and Sens.
In 1854 he published his influential Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture. A second important work appeared four years later. His Entretiens sur l'architecture and Dictionnaire du mobilier of 1858 contained discussion on goldsmiths' work, musical instruments, jewellery and armor in addition to furniture. His own sketches accompanied the text. Although generally hailed in his own time for these restorations, Viollet-le-Duc had his detractors, including the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Viollet-le-Duc assisted on many commissions of the July Monarchy government (1830-1848), and the 1852 imperial court of Napoleon III, introduced by Mérimée. He maintained a personal architectural practice designing houses, churches and chateaux. Student revolts to his teaching of art history and esthetics at the École des Beaux-Arts resulted in his replacement by Hippolyte Taine in 1864. After his death, his likeness was placed as one of the twelve apostles on the bronzeGLOSSARYAn alloy of copper (usually about 90 per cent) and tin, often also containing small amounts of other metals such as lead or zinc. Since antiquity it has been the metal most commonly used in cast sculpture because of its strength, durability, and the fact that it is easily workable - both hot and cold - by a variety of processes. It is easier to cast than copper because it has a lower melting-point, and its great tensile strength makes possible the protrusion of unsupported parts - an advantage over marble sculpture. The colour of bronze is affected by the proportion of tin or other metals present, varying from silverish to a rich, coppery red, and its surface beauty can be enhanced when it acquires a patina. roof sculptures at Notre-Dame.
